MODA: Design for All: Designing Womxn

Make do and mend: that’s the philosophy that most designers grew up with before realizing that they didn’t actually have to settle for the status quo.

Products designed for women’s wellness, such as the speculum, have remained unchanged for hundreds of years. The lack of female oversight and innovation with these products has gone far too long. What happens when we optimize instead of making do?

Industry trailblazers are reimagining women’s products, bringing industrial design and lived experience to entrepreneurship, successfully reframing experiences all-too-often designed without regard for the user’s comfort. Products designed and made by women keep the female body in mind, giving women not only a seat at the table but the opportunity to create lasting industry change.

Join us on July 20 for a virtual discussion in which we talk to five designers who are changing the paradigm by designing for womxn through their work on luxury sex toys for women, menstrual cups, and the pelvic exam experience.

Speakers:

Ti Chang, Co-Founder & VP of Design, Crave

Ti is a design entrepreneur and activist passionate about designing better products for women. She is the co-founder and VP of Design of CRAVE (lovecrave.com), a San Francisco-based company specializing in aesthetic pleasure products. Ti leads the design vision for the company’s full line of products which has won international design awards and has led CRAVE to mainstream partnerships with the likes of Nordstrom, MoMA Design Store, Standard Hotel, Goop, and Saint Laurent. Ti is credited with mainstreaming the category of sex jewelry with the introduction of the iconic Vesper vibrator necklace in 2014. Its viral duality as both a public and private object has continued to create connections and conversations around normalizing pleasure.

In 2021, Ti co-founded Design Allyship (designallyship.com) to provide anyone with actionable resources to improve the condition of historically marginalized designers in the industrial & product design industry. She serves on the Women In Design Committee Advisory Council of Industrial Designers Society of America, where she supports the community of industrial designers and women in design. She is also on the advisory board for San Francisco Design Week, Reimagine, and CRAVE Foundation for Women. Ti holds an M.A. in Design Products from the Royal College of Art in London and a B.S. in Industrial Design from the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Raja Schaar, Program Director, Drexel University

Raja Schaar, IDSA (she/her) is Program Director and Assistant Professor of Product Design at Drexel University’s Antoinette Westphal College of Media Arts and Design. She also co-chairs IDSA’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Council and formerly served as the Education Director for the organization. Raja is an industrial designer with an extensive background in museum exhibit design and healthcare design who is passionate about ways design can make a positive impact on social inequities at the intersections of health equity, environmental justice, and STEAM education.

Raja studies the ethical implications of design and technology through her research and her teaching through the lenses of science fiction, speculative design, and social entrepreneurship. Her current projects address biases maternal health through wearable technology and participatory design; community-based co-design for engaging black girls and underrepresented minorities in STEM/STEAM through design, technology, and dance; and biologically-inspired design and sustainability and climate justice.

Raja received her BSID from Georgia Tech in 2001 and completed her graduate work at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2003. Before joining Drexel’s Product Design faculty, Raja taught at Georgia Tech from 2004-2016 in the School of Industrial Design and the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at GA Tech and Emory University. She has been a practicing exhibition designer for nearly 20 years—with projects across the country—and speaks internationally on inclusive design practices, sustainability, and speculative design

Rachael Newton, Founder, Nixit

Rachael Newton is the founder of nixit, a suction-free menstrual cup that is revolutionizing periods. The progressive period care brand is bringing the menstrual cup mainstream and aims to change and lead the conversation around menstruation. Rachael started her career as a lawyer and worked for an investment bank for 9 years. She is a passionate environmentalist and advocate for gender equality.

Rachel Hobart, Senior Visual Designer, frog design

Rachel is a Co-Founder of Yona an Associate Design Director at frog design. Rachel is inspired by cultural shifts, historical trends, and looking at problems with a lens towards the future. The combination of Rachel’s craft in design and her passion for culture pushes her to make meaningful work. Through design, she hopes to create positive and impactful change in the world.

Rachel’s work on Yona has won various awards and recognition from institutions including Webby, Fast Company, Wired, The Atlantic, Instagram, Fortune Magazine and others. She graduated from the University of Washington with a Bachelor of Design.

Fran Wang, Mechanical Engineer, frog design

Based out of San Francisco, Fran Wang is a Co-Founder of Yona and a Mechanical Engineer at frog design, creating meaningful and memorable physical products and experiences. Her work in Yona has been recognized in Fortune, Wired, The Atlantic, Instagram, FastCo, and others. Though she is an engineer by training, her work has taken her into adjacent disciplines such as experience and industrial design. Fran is passionate about sustainability in hardware, as well as intersectional, equitable design. She graduated from Dartmouth College with B.S’s in Engineering and Biology.